Field recording and composition with Dean Rosenthal

Dean Rosenthal, an internationally active composer who lives on Martha’s Vineyard, will speak about field recordings and experimental music of his own and others, at the Chilmark library at 5 pm on Wednesday, March 20. Works discussed will include “Island,” a tapestry of recorded interviews and sounds from around the Island, and “Menemsha Village,” a field recording made in Menemsha. According to the library’s press release, the talk will also include a discussion of approaches to composing this kind of music and other works of similar origin.

Rosenthal is a composer of contemporary and experimental music, field recordings, digital pastiche, sound collage, and installations. He’s also a performer, a writer on music, and a theorist. According to the release, his instrumental music has been described as “thorny” and “modernist” by the New Yorker.

His works are performed, broadcast, choreographed, and installed internationally, primarily in North America and Europe, at venues such as Ohrenhoch der Geräuschladen, Spectrum, the Wulf, Brooklyn Museum, Electronic Music Foundation, Taipei Contemporary Arts Centre, Incubator Arts Project, La Scala de San Telmo, Symphony Space, at varied universities and art schools, and often outdoors, in situ, for Stones/Water/Time/Breath.

His writings have been published in the Open Space Magazine, the Ear Reader, and other contemporary publications. Most recently he has worked closely with Guggenheim fellow David Parker’s dance company the Bang Group, utilizing contemporary dance to express his instrumental music. Since 2012 he has made his home on Martha’s Vineyard, where he composed his ongoing international performance piece Stones/Water/Time/Breath, which in 2016 was given a 10-city, three-country performance as part of the international Make Music Day Festival, inaugurating an annual event.